John Musso from the American School Business Officials joins Saul Wagner from Hertz Furniture on The Balancing Act to discuss the importance of classroom furnishing and design when it comes to teaching and student learning.
Respectful Behavior
Blog Entries
In 2001, The Learning First Alliance wrote a report titled “Every Child Learning: Safe and Supportive Schools – A Summary,” which advocated for systemic approaches to supporting positive behavior in our nation’s schools. The Alliance argued for school-wide approaches to improving school climate, safety and discipline: “In a safe and supportive learning community, civility, order, and decorum are the norms and antisocial behaviors such as bullying and taunting are clearly unacceptable.” Ten years later, schools across the nation continually contend with the harsh and terrifying realities of bullying and the sad reality is that we still have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring a safe and supportive environment for our nation’s children. Fortunately, recent attention to the issue suggests that we are all beginning to take important steps in the right direction. ...
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (September 18, 2011), featured a cover story entitled “The Character Test”, suggesting that our kids’ success, and happiness, may depend less on perfect performance than on learning how to deal with failure. The two schools profiled were Riverdale, one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools, and KIPP Infinity Middle School, a member of the KIPP network of public charter schools in New York City. The common factor in each of these schools is a headmaster or charter school superintendent whose leadership is focused on providing an educational experience for the students he serves that encompasses more than academic rigor and achievement. Their strategies are based on the work of Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, whose scholarly publication, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, documents 24 character strengths common to all cultures and eras. The importance of these strengths does not come from their relationship to any system of ethics or moral laws but from their practical benefit: cultivating these strengths represent a reliable path to “the good life,” a life that is not just happy but also meaningful and fulfilling. ...
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On the one side of the current fight stands the “no excuses” crew, personified by Michelle Rhee, the broom-wielding ex-superintendent of the Washington D.C. schools. To them, and to the producers of “Waiting for Superman,” retrograde unions and bloated bureaucracies are biggest impediments to reform. Turn the schools over to the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school network, make every teacher as well-pedigreed as those recruited by Teach for America and our education problems will be solved. Diane Ravitch was once a dues-paying member of this group. She switched sides—detailed in her recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System—and since has been on the warpath, staunchly defending the contributions of teachers unions and the quality of public school teachers. From the outset this fight has been nasty, and with the recent publication of Steven Brill’s Class Warfare it has turned downright vicious. Brill makes a big
Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is David L. Kirp, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future (2011).
Schools are just beginning to open their doors, but the education food fights are already underway. I’m not thinking about kids in the cafeteria but adults wielding books and blogs. Amid this tomfoolery among the grownups the critical needs of children are going ignored.
On the one side of the current fight stands the “no excuses” crew, personified by Michelle Rhee, the broom-wielding ex-superintendent of the Washington D.C. schools. To them, and to the producers of “Waiting for Superman,” retrograde unions and bloated bureaucracies are biggest impediments to reform. Turn the schools over to the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school network, make every teacher as well-pedigreed as those recruited by Teach for America and our education problems will be solved. Diane Ravitch was once a dues-paying member of this group. She switched sides—detailed in her recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System—and since has been on the warpath, staunchly defending the contributions of teachers unions and the quality of public school teachers. From the outset this fight has been nasty, and with the recent publication of Steven Brill’s Class Warfare it has turned downright vicious. Brill makes a big 
deal of the fact that Ravitch is earning a bundle by (shock, shock!) being handsomely paid to give speeches to organizations that share her beliefs; Ravitch, saying that Brill has got his facts wrong, is threatening a defamation suit. Oy!
What gets lost amid all this “he said, she said” squabbling are the needs of kids. Little attention is getting paid to what’s important, not only to
The Washington Post recently featured an article by Donna St. George that discusses the trend to reevaluate zero tolerance approaches in school discipline. Zero-tolerance policies enacting severe punishments for offenses related to weapons, drugs, and behavioral issues caught on among schools in the early 1990s—aided by federal legislation through the Gun-Free Schools Act that requires students who bring guns to school be expelled, and intensified after the school shooting at Columbine High School. The article summarizes that “over the years, ‘zero-tolerance’ has described discipline policies that impose automatic consequences for offenses, regardless of context. The term also has come to refer to severe punishments for relatively minor infractions.”
Though this approach is still commonly implemented, there is evidence that it can be ineffectual, misapplied, and even counter-productive, leading a growing number of educators and elected officials to scale back on implementation. A University of Virginia education professor (Dewey Cornell) interviewed for the article claims that suspension and expulsion—common punishments in zero-tolerance policies—do not improve student behavior or ...
Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Melissa Whipple, a District Resource Teacher for the San Diego Unified School District. In her current role, she coaches school staff to help them understand the value of family and community engagement and how to leverage it to boost student performance. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at USD, teaching a master’s course demystifying Family, School, and Community Partnerships.
I have been teaching in many capacities since 1975, and it seems to me that most educational leaders want to skip to immediate implementation of educational changes or reforms without first building relationships.
They seem to be in such a hurry to prove themselves as change agents or visionary leaders or reformers, they fail to understand that taking time to build consensus and positive relationships with others is just as important (if not more so) as the content of their proposed reforms. John Wooden once said, "It is what we learn after we know it all that matters." I couldn't agree more.
Unfortunately, many educational leaders tend to lead with their mouths (telling others what is going to be done and how) rather than leading with their ears (listening to other points of view and figuring out how best to work in ways that develop a sense of shared responsibility for student success) and proceeding accordingly. It seems the message is, "Just do what we say. Don't worry, we have done all the thinking for you and we have all of the answers. Remember, it is our way or the highway." This doesn't go over well.
In my district, we have had a revolving door of superintendents and their imported administrative teams (we have had four complete turnovers in the last 10 years) who seemed qualified and also personally charming, and yet they each failed to understand that ...
Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Charles J. "Chuck" Saylors. He is president of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), an LFA member.
As the parent of four, with two sons still in middle school, I have seen firsthand how bullying can hurt our students. For my wife, Teresa, and I this issue started with our youngest experiencing illness at home and school every day. He would wake up each day physically ill, not wanting to go to school, this coming from a child who was rarely ill and loved school. We started digging down and discovered that both of our sons had experienced being bullied.
Bullying has led to so many tragedies. We have seen news accounts where students have taken their own lives because they were bullied by others. Bullying causes so many issues; bad grades, health issues, self esteem issues; all harmful and negative for our children.
PTA members, parents and caregivers must get engaged in this conversation. We must help our children understand why these actions are wrong. We must help teachers and school administrators know that ...
Lieutenant General Benjamin C. Freakley is the commanding general of the United States Army Accessions Command (USAAC) and oversees recruiting for the U.S. Army's officer, warrant officer and enlisted forces. USAAC has joined forces with the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) to support young people and boost graduation rates. (We wrote about this partnership in a blog posting several months ago. NASBE is a member of LFA.)
LTG Freakley recently spoke with us about the promise of greater collaboration between the military and schools.
Education: A National Security Issue
Public School Insights: Why do you think the military is getting involved in K-12 education?
LTG Freakley: I believe that the preparedness of our youth through education, health and conduct is a national security issue. Right now our young people, regardless of the tact they take for postsecondary, are limiting themselves. They are limiting themselves because they are not getting a good foundational education in K-12. They are not as healthy as they should be, with childhood obesity becoming an epidemic. And they get off track in their conduct, limiting what might be brilliant careers because they chose to get involved with gang violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy, etc.
It is disheartening to see all of this potential being limited. We believe that we have got to help our youth to achieve success through supporting our educators who, I believe, are undervalued in America—not recognized like they should be or supported like they should be. We ought to be as close to education as we can so we can sustain our all volunteer force and also so we can have an economically ...
It was in a pedagogy seminar years ago that I learned one of the most important lessons I have ever learned about what it takes to motivate people: Don't assume the worst in them. That lesson seems lost on far too many policy makers and pundits.
Oddly enough, it was also lost on the person leading the seminar. (We'll call him Nathan.) He assumed the worst in me. From the start, he signaled to my peers that I was a difficult student. It began on the first day, when I leaned far back in my chair to give him a clear view of my neighbor, who was asking him a question.
"Stop!" he cried, cutting her off in mid-sentence. "Notice that Claus is slouching in his chair, playing the confident man. Emily [who was across the table from me] is sitting upright, close to the table, listening carefully. Your students' body language can tell you a lot about their attitude."
When I protested that he had misread my cues, he used my protest as more evidence that I was a problem student.
I was dumbstruck. I was an adult among adults. What's more, I wasn't used to my new role. In school, I had always been the good child. I had been meek. I used to come home from school with facial muscles sore from the strain of wearing a compliant, attentive face all day. I would drive my more rebellious older brother to distraction with my constant fears that I could get into trouble somehow and ...
As the debate about school reforms heats up, it's getting tougher to have reasoned, thoughtful conversations about specific reform strategies. You're either a wild-eyed zealot pushing for scorched-earth change or a dour obstructionist doing all you can to defend the status quo. There is little room for doubt in this super-heated environment.
I see this dynamic at work in the growing crop of opinion pieces urging states to give no quarter on teacher evaluation and merit pay reforms. The standard for many pundits seems to be 50 percent. If you don't base at least half of a teacher's evaluation on test scores, you must be a weak-kneed servant of special interests. An editorial in yesterday's Washington Post offers just the latest example of this argument.
But aren't there some questions we should ask before we base most of our pay and evaluation decisions on test scores? Do we know how this will affect teacher morale? Do we know how it will influence teacher recruitment? Do we know how many teachers would stick around under the new regime? Are we sure ...
Long before "responsibility" and "hard work" became dreaded codewords for "socialism," they were values Americans wanted to see in their schools. Let me give you a glimpse of the good old days before the dust-up over the president's speech to school children.
In 2005, 93 percent of Americans said "teaching hard work and responsibility" was a very important goal for public schools. Forty-four percent said it was the most important goal. No other goal achieved a higher rating. These numbers come from a Learning First Alliance poll of likely voters. (The Alliance sponsors this website.)
These poll results should come as no surprise. Support for (and criticism of) public education reflect ingrained American values. We ignore that fact at our own risk.
The most enduring reforms rest on shared values. These days, we should cherish common ground when we find it. The recent tempest in a teacup does us no favors.
Update (7:23 pm): Teacher Larry Ferlazzo has his hands on the president's speech, and he has very specific ideas for using it in his own classes. ...
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